Traditional locomotives and locomotives within a consist arrangement are known to use a centralized on-board computer-based control system. Typically, such conventional control systems for a locomotive may include a central processing unit on the locomotive, a user interface for the locomotive operator, and interfaces or backplanes connected to the central processing unit on the locomotive for communications with sensor input and actuator output. As such, conventional control systems provide a consolidated interface for the locomotive operator. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,131,614 (the '614 patent) describes a conventional locomotive control system with such elements. The '614 patent describes locomotive control hardware including a central computer processor.
However, the complexity of new systems desired to be on-board a locomotive as part of a control system may introduce problems to systems such as that described in the '614 patent. In other words, some of the problems currently encountered with conventional control systems include the complexity of disparate components within the control system that need to effectively communicate with each other. Additionally, some conventional control systems may suffer from a lack of robust, mission critical, extensible and scalable components, which results in an undesirably higher cost, a less standardized and flexible architecture, and undesirably complex and complicated control systems.
The presently disclosed distributed control system is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above and/or other problems in the art.